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The Academy of Management Annals

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10 Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separationof Technology, Work and Organization

Wanda J. Orlikowski & Susan V. Scott

To cite this article: Wanda J. Orlikowski & Susan V. Scott (2008) 10 Sociomateriality:Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization, The Academy ofManagement Annals, 2:1, 433-474, DOI: 10.1080/19416520802211644

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The Academy of Management Annals

Vol. 2, No. 1, 2008, 433–474

433

ISSN 1941-6520 print/ISSN 1941-6067 online

© 2008 Academy of Management

DOI: 10.1080/19416520802211644

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10

Sociomateriality:

Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work

and Organization

WANDA J. ORLIKOWSKI

*

Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

SUSAN V. SCOTT

Department of Management, The London School of Economics

Taylor and FrancisRAMA_A_321331.sgm10.1080/19416520802211644Academy of Management Annals1941-6520 (print)/1941-6067 (online)Original Article2008Taylor & [email protected]

Abstract

We begin by juxtaposing the pervasive presence of technology in organizational

work with its absence from the organization studies literature. Our analysis of

four leading journals in the field confirms that over 95% of the articles

published in top management research outlets do not take into account the role

of technology in organizational life. We then examine the research that has been

done on technology, and categorize this literature into two research streams

according to their view of technology:

discrete entities

or

mutually dependent

ensembles

. For each stream, we discuss three existing reviews spanning the last

three decades of scholarship to highlight that while there have been many stud-

ies and approaches to studying organizational interactions and implications of

technology, empirical research has produced mixed and often-conflicting

*

Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

434

• The Academy of Management Annals

results. Going forward, we suggest that further work is needed to theorize the

fusion of technology and work in organizations, and that additional perspec-

tives are needed to add to the palette of concepts in use. To this end, we identify

a promising emerging genre of research that we refer to under the umbrella

term:

sociomateriality

. Research framed according to the tenets of a sociomate-

rial approach challenges the deeply taken-for-granted assumption that

technology, work, and organizations should be conceptualized separately, and

advances the view that there is an inherent inseparability between the technical

and the social. We discuss the intellectual motivation for proposing a sociom-

aterial research approach and point to some common themes evident in recent

studies. We conclude by suggesting that a reconsideration of conventional

views of technology may help us more effectively study and understand the

multiple, emergent, and dynamic sociomaterial configurations that constitute

contemporary organizational practices.

Introduction

We begin with what we believe is a telling observation about the management

literature on technology in organizations. And that observation is that, for the

most part, technology is missing in action. Consider that from the point of

view of organizational phenomena, technology seems to be everywhere in the

world of practice. Technology is a principal mediator of work on the produc-

tion floor, in retail interactions, in front and back offices, on the road, at client

sites, and in the global market place (Mansell, Avgerou, Quah & Silverstone,

2007). Annual corporate budgets for technology range in the billions of

dollars for large firms, and spending on technology is for many firms their

largest investment (Dewett & Jones, 2001). Technology has arguably become

an integral aspect of most business operations—whether the small Internet

start-up, mid-sized law firm, or large automobile manufacturer—and it is

hard to think of any contemporary organization that does not, at some level,

depend on some kind of technologies.

Yet a quick perusal of the academic management literature would suggest

that from the point of view of organizational research, technology is largely

absent from the world of organizing. We inspected the leading journals in the

field of management to assess whether and how published scholarship

addressed the role and influence of technology in organizations. We selected

four journals—

The Academy of Management Journal

(AMJ),

The Academy of

Management Review

(AMR),

Administrative Science Quarterly

(ASQ), and

Organization Science

(OS)—and examined every research article published in

these journals for the past decade (from January 1997 to December 2006). For

each article, we scrutinized title, keywords, abstract, and body to identify those

research studies that dealt (in some way or another, and at various levels of

analysis) with the issue or implications of technology. Based on the 2027 articles

we analyzed, we found that 100 (4.9%) directly addressed the role and influence

Sociomateriality •

435

of technology in organizations. Table 10.1 provides the detailed breakdown by

journal.

Thus, over the past decade of management research, over 95% of the arti-

cles published in leading management journals do not consider or take into

account the role and influence of technology in organizational life.

1

This is a

surprising and paradoxical finding, particularly given the following: (i) the

pervasive empirical presence of technology in mediating organizational activ-

ities within and across firms, industries, and economies (Zammuto, Griffith,

Majchrzack, Dougherty & Faraj, 2007); (ii) that much early organizational

research recognized the important role of technology in organizational affairs

(e.g., Aldrich, 1972; Blau et al., 1976; Blauner, 1964; Hage & Aiken, 1969;

Harvey, 1968; Hickson, Pugh, & Pheysey, 1969; Leavitt & Whistler, 1958;

Perrow, 1967; Thompson & Bates, 1958; Trist & Bamforth, 1951; Woodward,

1958); (iii) that the two divisions most focused on technological phenomena

in the Academy of Management (AoM)—Technology & Innovation Manage-

ment (TIM) and Organizational Communication & Information Systems

(OCIS)—together account for some 19.2% of Academy members (2375 TIM

members and 970 OCIS members out of a total AoM membership of 17,377)

2

;

and (iv) the various calls over the years to redress the lack of attention paid to

technology in organizational studies (e.g., Gagliardi, 1990; Goodman, Sproull

& Associates, 1990; Huber, 1990; Dewett & Jones 2001; Rafaeli & Pratt 2006;

Rousseau, 1979; Weick, 1990; Zammuto et al., 2007).

While it is not exactly clear what accounts for the paradox, a number of rea-

sons may be identified. One reason involves the growing complexity and spe-

cialization of organizational life that requires detailed investigation of multiple

issues—economic, political, strategic, psychological, and sociological—not

Table 10.1

Publication of Technology Articles in Management Journals (1997–2006)

Academy of

Management

Journal

Academy of

Management

Review

Administrative

Science

Quarterly

Organization

Science

Total

Across

Journals

Number of

published

research

articles

668 670 206 483 2027

Number of

articles

addressing

technology

27 11 10 52 100

Percentage

of articles

addressing

technology

4% 1.6% 4.9% 10.8% 4.9%

436


just technological ones. Attending to all these elements within a single study

or even a single program of study is particularly challenging, perhaps even

infeasible. So choices have to be made, and as a result, technology may be con-

sistently passed over. Another explanation for the paradox may point to the

apparent lack of interest in technological topics on the part of many organiza-

tional scholars, schooled as most are to attend to human, cultural, and eco-

nomic elements of institutions, not material ones. A third reason for the

paradox may be attributed to the general belief that technology is simply part

of the institutional infrastructure, akin to the “utilities” of electricity, tele-

phony or public transportation. As a result, it is not seen to require particular

attention by organizational scholars and consequently it fades into the back-

ground and remains largely taken for granted. Zammuto et al. (2007, p. 751)

characterize this as an “automated plumbing” view of technology. A fourth

explanation for the paradox may reflect the growing scale, complexity, speci-

ality, and rapid change in technological systems, particularly since the 1990s

(Zammuto et al., 2007), which make it challenging for management scholars—

especially those not trained in or conversant with technological matters—to

track and analyze in detail.

Whatever the reasons, we are left with the apparent contradiction that while

technology is everywhere to be found in organizational practice, it is largely

absent from the recent research discourse within the management literature.

We believe such an oversight is problematic. Not only are technologies critical

in contemporary organizing, but they will arguably continue to be so, as firms

attempt to grow globally, as they move onto the Web, as they deploy enterprise-

wide infrastructure systems, and as they invest in new communication media

to allow their members to work from multiple global locations. Such techno-

logical entailments are far from simple, straightforward, certain, or predictable,

and they are associated with a range of organizational outcomes, many of which

are emergent and unanticipated. What do such technological entailments

imply for organizations, their norms and forms of structuring, their capabilities

to act and interact, their performance of current and future strategies, and their

possibilities for innovation and learning? Who decides what technologies get

deployed in organizations, how are these designed, who gets to use and change

them, and with what consequences? Given increasing reliance on technologies

to get work done within and across organizations, these questions are highly

salient and their answers profoundly affect the kinds of organizational realities

that are produced.

Our aim in this paper is two-fold: to provide a broad overview of the orga-

nizational research that has been done on technology, and to offer a proposal

for future research that may offer some new directions and opportunities. In

our review of the literature, we identify and discuss two streams of research

on studying technology, and for each, we consider their key characteristics,

contributions and challenges. Space constraints preclude an exhaustive review


437

of all published articles on technology in organizations, so we focus our atten-

tion on key articles and reviews that have been particularly influential in the

field. In our proposal for future research, we consider a third research stream

on technology, which we refer to under the umbrella term of

sociomateriality.

While this stream of research is not much evident in the management litera-

ture, we identify an emerging corpus of scholarship developing around closely

related themes. We believe that some of the premises, concepts, and

approaches in this stream may be especially useful in current and future

research on technology, work, and organization. We conclude by arguing that

developing additional conceptual lenses and alternative research approaches

is particularly important given the dynamic, distributed, and interdependent

nature of technologies in use today, and the multiple and unprecedented ways

in which they are shaping and will continue to shape organizational realities.

Before proceeding, however, we need to address the thorny issue of defini-

tions. As we will see in the course of this chapter, technology has been defined

and theorized in many different ways in the management literature (Barley,

1988; Goodman et al., 1990; Kipnis, 1991; Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001). A mul-

tiplicity of meanings is also evident in the many other disciplines that have in

one way or another addressed technology, for example, history, philosophy,

psychology, sociology, anthropology, design, engineering, archeology, and

economics. The English-language Wikipedia includes the following descrip-

tion in its entry on

technology

:

Technology is a broad concept that deals with a species’ usage and

knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species’ ability to

control and adapt to its environment. […] However, a strict definition

is elusive; “technology” can refer to material objects of use to humanity,

such as machines, hardware or utensils, but can also encompass broader

themes, including systems, methods of organization, and techniques.

[…] The term is mostly used in three different contexts: when referring

to a tool (or machine); a technique; the cultural force; or a combination

of the three. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/technology [accessed 26

December 2007]

Similarly, reflecting the elusive sense of technology, Weick (1990) suggests

that technologies be understood in terms of an equivoque: “An equivoque is

something that admits of several possible or plausible interpretations and

therefore can be esoteric, subject to misunderstandings, uncertain, complex,

and recondite” (p. 1). Developing a singular or definitive definition of

technology is thus inherently problematic, and it may be more useful to

understand this term as theoretically and historically contingent. As a result,

we will not attempt a specific definition here, but will draw attention to (some

of) the different definitions that are evident in the extant literature. In our

discussion of future research, we will discuss recent intellectual developments

438


which challenge the notion of a singular view or definition of technology, and

which advance instead a conception of materiality as integral to human activi-

ties and relations, and thus as better understood in terms of sociomateriality.

The Literature on Technology in Organizations

Assumptions are central to all research. As Ackoff (1979) reminds us, they

make the complex phenomena tackled by social science researchable. These

assumptions shape what researchers do, why they focus on which aspects of the

phenomena, what they see as more or less salient, how they design their study,

and what they find (Morgan, 1983). This is no more evident than in the studies

of technology in organizations where, over the years, researchers have adopted

and implemented a number of diverse approaches, reflecting quite different

assumptions about the nature of technology and its role in organizations, the

logical structure of theoretical accounts, the key empirical mechanisms at

work, and the preferred methodological orientation. To understand this

diverse literature, it is helpful to have a sense of the various approaches and the

implications of their different choices.

The existing literature on technology in organizations can be characterized

in multiple ways depending on purpose and point of view. We focused on the

different ways in which scholars conceptualize and analyze technology,

3

and

identified two dominant research streams that are distinguished by their

theoretical stance towards technology, leading to differences in research

results, contributions made to knowledge, and recommendations proposed

for future research. The primary characteristics of these two research streams

Table 10.2

Two Streams of Research on Technology and Organizations

Research Stream I Research Stream II

Ontological Priority

Discrete Entities Mutually Dependent Ensembles

Primary Mechanisms

Impact; Moderation Interaction; Affordance

Logical Structure

Variance Process

Key Concepts

Technological Imperative

Contingency

Social Constructivism

Structuration

View of Social and

Technical Worlds

Humans/organizations

and technology are

assumed to be discrete,

independent entities

with inherent

characteristics

Humans/organizations and

technology are assumed to be

interdependent systems that

shape each other through

ongoing interaction

Examples

Blau et al. (1976)

Huber (1990)

Aiman-Smith & Green

(2002)

Barley (1986)

Prasad (1993)

Boudreau & Robey (2005)


439

are depicted in Table 10.2. Broadly speaking, the first research stream reflects

an ontological commitment to a world of discrete entities that have some

inherent and relatively stable characteristics. This is a focus on individual

actors and things that are seen to be largely independent, but linked through

uni-directional causal relationships, and having largely determinate effects on

each other. The second research stream is characterized by its general

commitment to an ensemble or web ontology (Kling, 1991), where actors and

things are seen to be related through a reciprocal and emergent process of

interaction, leading over time to co-evolved or interdependent systems. We

consider each of these two research streams in turn.

Research Stream I:

Discrete Entities

In this stream of work, technology is treated as a specific and relatively distinct

entity that interacts with various aspects of the organization, becoming partic-

ularly salient during moments of technology design, diffusion, implementa-

tion, deployment, adoption, adaptation, use, or breakdown. Many of the

studies in this stream posit technology as an independent variable (operation-

alized variously as number, type, or cost of machinery, devices, techniques,

etc.) having a range of effects—at different levels of analysis (individual, group,

enterprise, and inter-organizational)—on multiple organizational outcomes

(the dependent variables). Other studies in this stream depart from treating

technology as an independent variable, viewing technology instead as a

moderating variable that variously influences the relationship between organi-

zational variables (e.g., structure, culture, inter-organizational relations) and

certain outcomes (e.g., efficiency, innovation, learning). Whether considering

technology as an independent or moderating variable, studies in this stream

tend to adopt a variance approach in their research designs (Mohr, 1982).

Examples of this stream of work include the following: research into the

meanings or attitudes towards computing at the individual level (e.g., Davis,

1989; Griffith, 1999; Rafaeli, 1986; Rice & Aydin, 1991); studies of changes in

communication and decision-making at individual or group levels related to

technology use (e.g., Huber, 1990; Hinds & Kiesler, 1995; Trevino, Webster, &

Stein, 2000); investigations of productivity improvements at both individual

and enterprise levels linked to the adoption or investment in new technologies

(e.g., Aral & Weill, 2007; Brynjolfsson & Hitt, 1996; Kraut et al., 1989);

research into shifts in firm structure associated with technology (e.g., Blau

et al., 1976; Burkhardt & Brass, 1990; Fry, 1982; Pfeffer & Leblebici, 1977); and

examinations of transformations in market or industry conditions attributed

to the widespread diffusion of new technological capacities (e.g., Malone,

Yates, & Benjamin, 1987; Tushman & Anderson, 1986).

Given the broad scope of this literature, across multiple levels of analysis

and multiple topics (from individual attitudes to market structures), it is not

possible to do a comprehensive review of this work here. We decided instead

440


to discuss three influential reviews of this literature, selecting these reviews to

represent three different decades of management research (Attewell & Rule,

1984; Huber, 1990; Dewett & Jones, 2001). Focusing on these reviews of liter-

ature allows us to highlight the key rationales, problematics, views, logics, and

recommendations of the discrete entities stream of research. Table 10.3 provides

a summary of the three reviews.

Rationale for Studying Technology in Organizational Research

All three of the reviews motivate the need to study technology in organization

studies by appealing to the rapid and widespread deployment of technology

(especially, information technology) throughout organizations and society.

Attewell and Rule (1984) argue that the rapid diffusion of technology raises

critical concerns about its social impacts on skills and quality of work, shifts in

balance of power among workers and managers, and changes in employment

levels. Huber (1990) in turn, contends that organizations are increasingly

adopting technologies that are substantially more varied and more sophisti-

cated than earlier technologies, and that these can be expected to have

profound effects on organizational design, intelligence, and decision-making.

Dewett and Jones (2001) pick up on Huber’s argument and extend it by point-

ing to the ubiquity and range of contemporary information technology that

mediates organizational affairs at multiple levels (from individual aids to

inter-organizational linkages).

Problems with Existing Literature

Interestingly, the three reviews—spanning three decades of scholarship—

identify similar difficulties with the existing management literature in making

their case for increased attention to technology in organization studies. All

three point to the disparate, fragmentary, and apparently conflicting results

reported by empirical research on the effects of technology. Attewell and Rule

(1984) criticize what they see as a widespread perception that much is known

about the consequences of computing and that these effects are “foregone

conclusions” (p. 1184). They argue that such

a priori

assessments are inappro-

priate given the mixed empirical record, and the range and variety of variables

that are relevant. Huber (1990) also points to the mixed empirical results to

argue that existing organization theory cannot account for these findings

because it was developed in an earlier time when technologies were simpler

and much less varied. Dewett and Jones (2001) likewise suggest that new

organization theories are needed to explain more fully the implications of

information technology (IT) for organizations. They write “We believe that

the pace of IT change that has swept through the economy has left the

academic community behind and that the definition, meaning, and current

significance of many of the basic building blocks and theories of organiza-

tional studies need to be reexamined” (p. 335). They call for the development


441

Tabl

e 10

.3

Revi

ews

of th

e Li

tera

ture

on

Tech

nolo

gy a

nd O

rgan

izatio

ns—

Rese

arch

Stre

am I

Att

ewel

l &

Ru

le (

19

84

)H

ub

er (

19

90

)D

ewet

t &

Jo

nes

(2

00

1)

Rat

ion

ale

for

Stu

dyi

ng

Tec

hn

olo

gy

Wid

esp

read

use

of

info

rmat

ion

tech

no

logy

(IT

) in

so

ciet

y ra

ises

cri

tica

l

issu

es a

bo

ut

thei

r so

cial

co

nse

qu

ence

s.

Nee

d t

o u

nd

erst

and

bo

th s

oci

o-

eco

no

mic

im

pac

ts (

e.g.

, em

plo

ymen

t,

effi

cien

cy, d

ecis

ion

mak

ing)

an

d s

oci

al

exp

erie

nce

s (e

.g.,

ho

w f

ulf

illi

ng

is

com

pu

ter-

med

iate

d w

ork

?).

Org

aniz

atio

ns

are

incr

easi

ngl

y

ado

pti

ng

“ad

van

ced

in

form

atio

n

tech

no

logy

(IT

)”, w

ho

se e

ffec

ts a

re

mo

re s

op

his

tica

ted

an

d m

ore

var

ied

than

th

ose

of

earl

ier

tech

no

logi

es. W

e

nee

d t

o in

vest

igat

e th

e im

pac

ts o

f su

ch

new

tec

hn

olo

gies

on

th

e n

atu

re o

f

org

aniz

atio

nal

des

ign

, in

tell

igen

ce,

and

dec

isio

n-m

akin

g.

Info

rmat

ion

tec

hn

olo

gy (

IT)

is u

biq

uit

ou

s

and

mu

ltip

le (

ran

gin

g fr

om

en

terp

rise

-

wid

e sy

stem

s an

d g

lob

al d

atab

ases

, to

per

son

al d

igit

al a

ssis

tan

ts a

nd

fax

mac

hin

es).

Sp

end

ing

on

tec

hn

olo

gy

amo

un

ts t

o t

he

larg

est

inve

stm

ent

mad

e

by

firm

s (i

n b

illi

on

s o

f d

oll

ars)

an

d t

his

is

gro

win

g. N

eed

to

un

der

stan

d t

he

imp

acts

th

ese

tech

no

logi

es h

ave

on

“str

ateg

ic o

utc

om

es”.

Pro

ble

ms

wit

h

Ex

isti

ng

Lit

erat

ure

Nee

d t

o c

hal

len

ge t

he

wid

esp

read

vie

w

that

IT

im

pac

ts a

re “

fore

gon

e

con

clu

sio

ns”

(e.

g., d

esk

illi

ng

or

up

grad

ing)

. Nee

d t

o d

evel

op

th

eori

es

that

acc

ou

nt

for

the

frag

men

tary

,

dis

par

ate,

an

d s

eem

ingl

y co

nfl

icti

ng

resu

lts

asso

ciat

ed w

ith

IT

.

Th

e u

se o

f “a

dva

nce

d I

T”

in

org

aniz

atio

ns

is a

sso

ciat

ed w

ith

mu

ltip

le e

mp

iric

al f

ind

ings

th

at

can

no

t b

e ex

pla

ined

by

exis

tin

g

org

aniz

atio

n t

heo

ry t

hat

was

dev

elo

ped

in

an

ear

lier

tim

e, w

hen

tech

no

logi

cal c

apab

ilit

ies

wer

e si

mp

ler

and

co

nst

ant.

Nee

d a

th

eory

of

the

effe

cts

of

IT o

n o

rgan

izat

ion

s, w

hic

h

syn

thes

izes

, in

tegr

ates

, an

d e

xpli

cate

s

the

mu

ltip

le e

mp

iric

al r

esu

lts.

Th

e im

pli

cati

on

s o

f IT

fo

r o

rgan

izat

ion

al

ou

tco

mes

are

sig

nif

ican

t an

d e

volv

ing,

and

man

y o

f th

e b

asic

bu

ild

ing

blo

cks

of

org

aniz

atio

n s

tud

ies

wil

l n

eed

to

be

reex

amin

ed a

nd

rew

ritt

en. N

eed

to

enh

ance

Hu

ber

’s (

19

90

) m

od

el t

o

dev

elo

p a

n u

pd

ated

an

d “

theo

reti

call

y

pla

usi

ble

” ac

cou

nt

of

IT’s

ro

le i

n

stra

tegi

c o

rgan

izat

ion

al o

utc

om

es.

442


Tabl

e 10

.3

Revi

ews

of th

e Li

tera

ture

on

Tech

nolo

gy a

nd O

rgan

izatio

ns—

Rese

arch

Stre

am I

(Con

tinue

d)

Att

ewel

l &

Ru

le (

19

84

)H

ub

er (

19

90

)D

ewet

t &

Jo

nes

(2

00

1)

Def

init

ion

of

Tec

hn

olo

gy

Tec

hn

olo

gy i

s n

ot

def

ined

. Fo

cus

is o

n

IT, s

een

bro

adly

as

“co

mp

uti

ng

tech

no

logi

es”.

Tec

hn

olo

gy i

s se

en h

ere

as “

adva

nce

d

IT”,

an

d d

efin

ed a

s ra

tio

nal

ity-

enh

anci

ng

dev

ices

th

at (

i) t

ran

smit

,

man

ipu

late

, an

alyz

e, o

r ex

plo

it

info

rmat

ion

; (ii

) in

wh

ich

a d

igit

al

com

pu

ter

pro

cess

es i

nfo

rmat

ion

inte

gral

to

th

e u

ser’

s co

mm

un

icat

ion

or

dec

isio

n t

ask

; an

d (

iii)

th

at h

ave

mad

e th

eir

app

eara

nce

sin

ce 1

97

0.

Tec

hn

olo

gy is

see

n h

ere

as I

T, a

nd

def

ined

as h

avin

g ce

rtai

n “

use

ful

pro

per

ties

”: (

i)

info

rma

tion

eff

icie

nci

es

(i.

e., c

ost

an

d

tim

e sa

vin

gs t

hat

res

ult

wh

en I

T

incr

ease

s ta

sk p

erfo

rman

ce a

nd

exp

ansi

on

of

role

s); a

nd

(ii

)

info

rma

tion

syn

ergi

es

(i.

e., p

erfo

rman

ce g

ain

s th

at

resu

lt w

hen

IT

en

able

s in

div

idu

als

or

un

its

to p

oo

l re

sou

rces

an

d c

oll

abo

rate

acro

ss b

ou

nd

arie

s).

Lo

gic

of

Arg

um

ent

Vie

w I

T a

s an

in

dep

end

ent

vari

able

affe

ctin

g: (

i) n

um

ber

an

d q

ual

ity

of

job

s (i

.e.,

job

sat

isfa

ctio

n, c

han

ges

in

skil

ls o

ver

tim

e, a

lien

atio

n,

un

emp

loym

ent,

wo

rker

pro

du

ctiv

ity)

;

(ii)

man

agem

ent

dec

isio

n-m

akin

g (i

.e.,

exte

nt

of

cen

tral

izat

ion

of

info

rmat

ion

and

po

wer

); a

nd

(ii

i) o

rgan

izat

ion

al

inte

ract

ion

s w

ith

th

eir

envi

ron

men

ts

(i.e

., h

ow

tec

hn

olo

gy m

edia

tes

dea

lin

gs

wit

h t

he

pu

bli

c, c

lien

ts, a

nd

cust

om

ers)

.

Dev

elo

p p

rop

osi

tio

ns

that

po

sit

the

use

of

com

pu

ter-

assi

sted

co

mm

un

icat

ion

and

th

e u

se o

f co

mp

ute

r-as

sist

ed

dec

isio

n-a

idin

g te

chn

olo

gies

as

ind

epen

den

t va

riab

les,

an

d p

osi

t th

e

foll

ow

ing

as d

epen

den

t va

riab

les:

(i)

char

acte

rist

ics

of

org

aniz

atio

n

inte

llig

ence

an

d d

ecis

ion

-mak

ing

(e.g

.,

mo

re r

apid

an

d a

ccu

rate

iden

tifi

cati

on

of

pro

ble

ms

and

op

po

rtu

nit

ies)

; an

d

(ii)

asp

ects

of

org

aniz

atio

n d

esig

n

(e.g

., si

ze a

nd

het

ero

gen

eity

of

dec

isio

n u

nit

s, n

um

ber

of

leve

ls).

Bu

ild

on

Hu

ber

’s (

19

90

) ac

cou

nt

of

IT a

s

an i

nd

epen

den

t va

riab

le t

hat

en

han

ces

org

aniz

atio

n i

nte

llig

ence

, dec

isio

n-

mak

ing,

an

d p

erfo

rman

ce, b

ut

pro

po

se

IT a

s a

mo

der

atin

g va

riab

le t

hat

lin

ks

emp

loye

es, c

od

ifie

s k

no

wle

dge

bas

es,

imp

rove

s in

form

atio

n p

roce

ssin

g,

incr

ease

s b

ou

nd

ary

span

nin

g, a

nd

enh

ance

s co

ord

inat

ion

. IT

th

us

mo

der

ates

th

e re

lati

on

ship

bet

wee

n

org

aniz

atio

n c

har

acte

rist

ics

(e.g

., si

ze,

stru

ctu

re, i

nte

r-o

rgan

izat

ion

al r

elat

ion

s)

and

str

ateg

ic o

utc

om

es (

i.e.

, eff

icie

ncy

and

in

no

vati

on

).


443

Res

earc

h A

gen

da

No

sim

ple

set

of

theo

reti

cal

rela

tio

nsh

ips

can

acc

ou

nt

for

all

the

dat

a re

veal

ed t

hro

ugh

em

pir

ical

inq

uir

y. W

hil

e th

e so

cial

im

pac

ts o

f

com

pu

tin

g ar

e in

fin

itel

y va

riab

le, t

he

sou

rces

of

thes

e va

riat

ion

s ar

e

acce

ssib

le t

o s

tud

y. T

hu

s n

eed

lar

ge

sam

ple

s an

d e

xten

sive

rep

lica

tio

n s

o a

s

to c

har

acte

rize

th

e ef

fect

s o

f co

mp

uti

ng

in t

hei

r fu

ll v

arie

ty a

t m

ult

iple

lev

els

of

anal

ysis

: sk

ills

, jo

bs,

wo

rker

s,

org

aniz

atio

ns,

un

emp

loym

ent,

etc

.

Rec

om

men

d a

tw

o-p

ron

ged

fo

cus

for

futu

re r

esea

rch

: (i)

det

erm

ine

wh

at

par

ticu

lar

cau

se–

effe

ct r

elat

ion

s p

reva

il

in s

pec

ific

co

nte

xts

; an

d (

ii)

loca

te s

uch

case

s w

ith

in t

he

larg

er r

ange

s o

f ca

ses

in w

hic

h s

imil

ar c

ause

–ef

fect

rel

atio

ns

can

be

exp

ecte

d t

o p

reva

il.

Org

aniz

atio

n t

heo

ry h

as a

lway

s b

een

con

cern

ed w

ith

pro

cess

es o

f

com

mu

nic

atio

n, c

oo

rdin

atio

n, a

nd

con

tro

l, a

nd

th

e n

atu

re a

nd

effe

ctiv

enes

s o

f th

ese

pro

cess

es a

re

chan

gin

g w

ith

ad

van

ced

IT

.

Org

aniz

atio

n s

cho

lars

sh

ou

ld t

hu

s

acce

pt

that

IT

fit

s w

ith

in t

he

do

mai

n

of

org

aniz

atio

n t

heo

ry, a

nd

th

at i

t w

ill

hav

e a

sign

ific

ant

effe

ct o

n

org

aniz

atio

n d

esig

n, i

nte

llig

ence

, an

d

dec

isio

n-m

akin

g.

Rec

om

men

d r

esea

rch

ers

stu

dy

adva

nce

d I

T a

s: (

i) a

n i

nte

rven

tio

n o

r

jolt

in

th

e li

fe o

f an

org

aniz

atio

n t

hat

may

hav

e u

nan

tici

pat

ed c

on

seq

uen

ces;

(ii)

a v

aria

ble

th

at e

nh

ance

s th

e q

ual

ity

and

tim

elin

ess

of

org

aniz

atio

nal

inte

llig

ence

an

d d

ecis

ion

-mak

ing;

an

d

(iii

) a

vari

able

th

at e

nab

les

org

aniz

atio

ns

to b

e d

esig

ned

dif

fere

ntl

y th

an w

as p

oss

ible

bef

ore

.

Th

e fu

ll i

mp

lica

tio

ns

of

IT f

or

org

aniz

atio

nal

ch

arac

teri

stic

s ar

e st

ill

evo

lvin

g an

d w

ill c

on

tin

ue

to d

o s

o. N

eed

to r

eco

gniz

e th

at t

her

e ar

e fe

edb

ack

loo

ps

as p

eop

le l

earn

ho

w t

o “

op

tim

ally

app

ly”

the

IT t

o i

ts c

on

text

ove

r ti

me.

Rec

om

men

d r

esea

rch

ers

focu

s o

n s

ever

al

issu

es g

oin

g fo

rwar

d: (

i) h

ow

do

es I

T

mo

der

ate

the

way

str

ateg

y af

fect

s

per

form

ance

an

d h

ow

do

es I

T f

acil

itat

e

com

pet

itiv

e ad

van

tage

; (ii

) w

hat

is

the

rela

tio

nsh

ip b

etw

een

IT

an

d f

irm

per

form

ance

(m

ay n

eed

to

dev

elo

p a

con

tin

gen

cy f

ram

ewo

rk t

o s

ort

ou

t th

e

mix

ed a

nd

am

big

uo

us

resu

lts)

; (ii

i) w

hat

is t

he

role

of

tim

e in

ap

ply

ing

IT (

ho

w t

o

dea

l w

ith

lea

rnin

g an

d c

han

ge o

ver

tim

e); a

nd

(iv

) w

hat

are

th

e d

iffe

ren

t

typ

es o

f IT

em

plo

yed

at

dif

fere

nt

leve

ls o

f

the

org

aniz

atio

n, a

nd

wh

at d

iffe

ren

t

role

s d

oes

IT

fu

lfil

l at

dif

fere

nt

leve

ls.

444


of a more “theoretically plausible” account of IT and its role in a wide array of

strategic organizational issues (p. 315).

Definition of Technology

The views of technology adopted by the three reviews are related in that they

all assume technology is a distinct entity, but they also differ somewhat,

reflecting perhaps the changing contours of and knowledge about technologi-

cal artifacts over the years. In 1984, Attewell and Rule concentrated their

attention on what they generically refer to as “computing”, without indicating

the particular features, dimensions, or properties designated by their term. Six

years on, Huber (1990) focus on “advanced information technology”, which

he defined as devices having both “basic characteristics” (e.g., data storage

capacity, transmission capacity, and processing capacity), and “advanced

properties” (e.g., features that facilitate easier, less expensive, more precise,

and more controlled communication and information access and retrieval).

He argues that these latter properties are particularly typical of devices that

entail the following features: (i) they transmit, manipulate, analyze or exploit

information; (ii) they include a digital computer which processes information

integral to users’ communication and decision-making tasks; and (iii) they

were developed after 1970.

Eleven years later, Dewett and Jones (2001) concentrate on what they refer

to as “information systems and information technologies” (and label as “IT”).

With this term they encompass a wide variety of software and hardware plat-

forms, from enterprise-wide accounting applications and inter-organizational

distribution systems to communication media such as intranets, voice mail,

fax, email, and videoconferencing, as well as personal digital assistants and

mobile phones. They follow Huber in claiming that these technologies have

some important properties that are particularly useful in organizational affairs.

They single out two such properties: (i) information efficiencies, which repre-

sent the cost and time savings that result when IT facilitates task performance

and allows role expansion; and (ii) information synergies, which represent the

gains in performance that follow from the pooling of resources and collabora-

tion across roles or boundaries enabled by IT.

Logic of Argument

All three of the reviews privilege a variance approach in their characterization

of the relationship between technology and organizations. Where they differ is

in whether they posit technology as an independent or moderating variable.

Thus, Attewell and Rule (1984) assume IT is an independent variable, which

affects a number of outcomes at multiple levels of analysis, for example, the

quality of work (assessed through studying changes in job satisfaction, alien-

ation, and skills), the level of unemployment (measured as declines in jobs

available across sectors, worker productivity), management decision-making


445

(as observed in the extent of centralization/decentralization of information and

power), and organizational interactions with their environments (examined in

terms of how technology affects an organization’s dealings with its publics and

customers). Huber (1990) similarly posits IT as an independent variable that

enhances organization intelligence and decision-making, thus firm perfor-

mance. Distinguishing between the use of “computer-assisted communication

technologies” and “computer-assisted decision-aiding technologies”, he devel-

ops 14 propositions concerning these independent variables and a range of

dependent variables related to the following: (i) characteristics of organization

intelligence and decision-making (e.g., the speed and accuracy of problem

identification, the quality of decisions made), and (ii) aspects of organization

design (e.g., the size and heterogeneity of decision units, the number of organi-

zational levels, the extent of centralization/decentralization, etc.).

While building on Huber’s (1990) model, Dewett and Jones (2001) depart

from it by positing IT as a moderating variable. In particular, they contend that

IT offers five important benefits—linking and enabling employees, codifying

the knowledge base, increasing boundary spanning, improving information

processing, and enhancing collaboration and coordination—which moderate

the relationship between organization characteristics (specifically, structure,

size, culture, learning, and inter-organizational relations) and the strategic

organizational outcomes of efficiency and innovation.

Research Agenda

In making recommendations for future research, each of the three reviews

offers specific suggestions concerning what should be studied and how.

Attewell and Rule (1984) note that while the social impacts of computing are

infinitely variable, the sources of these variations are accessible to study. They

thus advise the use of large samples and extensive replication so as to charac-

terize the effects of computing in their full variety at multiple levels of analysis

(i.e., skills, jobs, workers, organizations, and employment levels). They

recommend that future research should proceed along two tracks, the first to

determine what particular cause–effect relations prevail in specific contexts,

and the second to locate such specific findings within the larger array of cases

in which similar cause–effect relations might be expected. Huber’s (1990)

recommendations are aimed at the management literature more generally,

urging organization scholars to pay more attention to IT. He argues that orga-

nization theory has always been concerned with processes of communication,

coordination, and control, and that these are changing dramatically with the

advent of advanced IT. He urges organization scholars to incorporate IT more

centrally within the domain of organization theory as it is having, and will

continue to have, significant effects on organization design, intelligence, and

decision-making. He recommends researchers study advanced IT as: (i) an

intervention or jolt in the life of an organization that may have unanticipated

446


consequences; (ii) a variable that enhances the quality and timeliness of orga-

nizational intelligence and decision-making; and (iii) a variable that enables

organizations to be designed differently than was possible before the advent of

advanced IT.

Dewett and Jones (2001) note that the full implications of IT for organiza-

tions are still evolving and will continue to do so. Researchers need to keep this

in mind, while also recognizing the feedback loops that arise as people learn

how to “optimally apply” the IT to its context over time. For future research,

they recommend that researchers focus on the following sets of issues: (i) how

does IT moderate the way strategy affects performance and how does IT facil-

itate competitive advantage (e.g., through reducing transaction costs, increas-

ing quality or innovation, differentiation, leveraging knowledge, etc.)? (ii)

what is the relationship between IT and organizational performance (for which

they suggest that more fine-grained analyses and a contingency framework

may be needed to sort out the range of mixed and ambiguous results)? (iii)

what is the role of time in applying IT in organizations (as this will help address

how to deal with learning and change over time)? and (iv) what are the differ-

ent types of IT employed at different levels of the organization, how do these

effects play out, and what different roles does IT fulfill at these different levels?

Research Stream II:

Mutually Dependent Ensembles

In the second stream of literature, technology is understood as part of the

complex process through which organizing is accomplished. In a departure

from the ontology of discrete entities dominating the first research stream, the

focus here is on the dynamic interactions between people (or organizations)

and technology over time. These interconnections are understood to be

embedded and emergent, and thus not fully determinate (Ciborra & Associ-

ates, 2001). Studies in this stream of work posit neither independent nor

dependent variables, but rather adopt a processual logic where interactions

and outcomes are seen to be mutually dependent, integrative, and co-evolving

over time.

The issues studied in this stream include research regarding the interplay

between aspects of technology and various elements of organizational life,

such as what meanings emerge to make sense of a new information system

(e.g., Prasad, 1993), how do technological implementations entail the mutual

adaptation of technology and organization (Leonard-Barton, 1988), how does

the use of electronic media get shaped by existing cultural norms and practices

(e.g., Markus, 1994; Yates, Orlikowski, & Okamura, 1999), how do technolo-

gies serve as boundary objects to afford knowledge sharing across disparate

communities (e.g., Bechky, 2003; Carlile, 2002), how does the design and use

of technology shift the nature of work (e.g., Boudreau & Robey, 2005;

Orlikowski, 2000; Zuboff, 1988), how does electronic surveillance affect team

dynamics (Sewell, 1998), how do lead users shape the nature and capabilities


447

of new technologies (von Hippel, 1994), how does the use of technology

restructure organizational relations (e.g., Barley, 1986, 1990; DeSanctis &

Poole, 1994; Walsham, 1993), how do power positions shape the design of

technologies over time (e.g., Thomas, 1994), when and how does the design,

implementation, and adoption of a new industry-wide information system

shift relations among multiple players in a financial market (e.g., Barrett &

Walsham, 1999).

More recent work in this stream has drawn on institutional theory to argue

that on the one hand technology can become inscribed with institutional forces

that set the rules of rationality (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991), while on the other

it is one of the carriers within the environment that contributes to the struc-

turing of organizations (Scott, 1995). For example, Silva and Backhouse’s (1997)

case study of the London Ambulance Service considers how technology comes

to be institutionalized (or not) by rendering new rules and meanings embedded

during systems design with those already circulating in the organization. In

another example, Avgerou’s (2002) analysis of innovation and economic reform

in developing countries treats technology as “institutionally constituted”,

acquiring a momentum of its own that is noticeably separate from plans to align

it with business objectives.

As with the first research stream, the wide range of issues and phenomena

covered by this stream precludes an exhaustive review. We thus discuss three

literature reviews, selected as before to represent three different decades of

management research (Barley, 1988; Roberts & Grabowski, 1996; Zammuto

et al., 2007). Focusing on these reviews of literature allows us to highlight the

key rationales, problematics, views, logics, and recommendations of the ensem-

ble stream of research. Table 10.4 provides a summary of the three reviews.

Rationale for Studying Technology in Organizational Research

The rationale for why organizational scholars should study technology echoes

many of the issues raised by the first research stream: an articulation of the

widespread advance and use of complex technologies is following by a discus-

sion of the lack of solid organizational knowledge to explain the empirical

patterns. Barley (1988) suggests that given the many advances in technology

(e.g., robotics, microelectronics, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineer-

ing), Western society is on the verge of a transformation on a similar scale to

the industrial revolution. However, there is little or no consensus on the

character and direction of these transformations. More focused research in

organizational studies is needed if scholars are to tackle this important

phenomenon. Roberts and Grabowski (1996) similarly point to the rapid

advances of technology in organizations, and the inability of management

research to keep pace. They highlight a number of problems associated with

existing views of technology in organizations, particularly with measurement

and assessment, and argue for rethinking the utility of the technology

448


Tabl

e 10

.4

Revi

ews

of th

e Li

tera

ture

on

Tech

nolo

gy a

nd O

rgan

izatio

ns—

Rese

arch

Stre

am II

Bar

ley

(19

88

)R

ob

erts

& G

rab

ow

ski

(19

96

)Z

amm

uto

et

al. (

20

07

)

Rat

ion

ale

for

Stu

dyi

ng

Tec

hn

olo

gy

Giv

en a

dva

nce

s in

tec

hn

olo

gy

(ro

bo

tics

, mic

roel

ectr

on

ics,

gen

etic

engi

nee

rin

g), W

este

rn s

oci

ety

is o

n

the

verg

e o

f a

tran

sfo

rmat

ion

ak

in

to t

he

ind

ust

rial

rev

olu

tio

n. B

ut

ther

e is

no

co

nse

nsu

s in

th

e

dir

ecti

on

of

thes

e ch

ange

s. N

eed

an

alte

rnat

ive

app

roac

h t

o s

tud

yin

g

chan

ges

in t

his

are

a.

Tec

hn

olo

gy a

dva

nce

s ra

pid

ly, y

et t

her

e

are

mu

ltip

le p

rob

lem

s w

ith

exi

stin

g

view

s o

f te

chn

olo

gy i

n o

rgan

izat

ion

s,

par

ticu

larl

y w

ith

its

mea

sure

men

t an

d

asse

ssm

ent

in a

ch

angi

ng

wo

rld

. Nee

d

to r

eth

ink

th

e u

tili

ty o

f th

e te

chn

olo

gy

con

stru

ct in

org

aniz

atio

n r

esea

rch

, an

d

dev

elo

p f

ram

ewo

rks

that

aff

ord

con

sid

erin

g te

chn

olo

gy a

s b

oth

a

pro

cess

an

d a

pro

du

ct.

Tec

hn

olo

gy h

as b

een

a c

entr

al v

aria

ble

in

org

aniz

atio

nal

th

eory

sin

ce t

he

fift

ies,

bu

t th

ere

has

bee

n a

sig

nif

ican

t d

ecli

ne

in in

tere

st in

tec

hn

olo

gy s

ince

th

en. T

his

is p

rob

lem

atic

, par

ticu

larl

y gi

ven

th

e

per

vasi

ve p

rese

nce

of

tech

no

logy

in

con

tem

po

rary

org

aniz

atio

ns,

an

d t

he

po

ten

tial

fo

r su

ch t

ech

no

logi

es t

o e

nab

le

imp

ort

ant

shif

ts i

n o

rgan

izat

ion

al f

orm

and

fu

nct

ion

.

Pro

ble

ms

wit

h

Ex

isti

ng

Lit

erat

ure

Sch

ola

rs h

ave

bee

n m

isle

d b

y th

e

du

al s

tatu

s o

f te

chn

olo

gy a

s b

oth

ph

ysic

al a

nd

so

cial

ob

ject

. A f

ocu

s

on

th

e fo

rmer

lead

s to

tech

nol

ogic

al

det

erm

inis

m,

wh

ile

a fo

cus

on

th

e

latt

er r

esu

lts

in

soci

al

det

erm

inis

m

.

A d

esir

e to

ex

pla

in a

ll e

ven

ts w

ith

a

sin

gle

logi

c d

isco

un

ts s

oci

al

com

ple

xit

y, d

isto

rtin

g th

e n

atu

re o

f

tech

no

logy

, an

d l

ead

ing

to

inap

pro

pri

ate

clai

ms

that

tech

no

logy

’s e

ffec

ts a

re f

ore

gon

e

con

clu

sio

ns.

Org

aniz

atio

ns

and

tec

hn

olo

gy a

re

un

der

goin

g p

rofo

un

d c

han

ges,

resu

ltin

g in

a g

row

ing

inad

equ

acy

of

exis

tin

g vi

ews

of

tech

no

logy

. Th

e

lite

ratu

re i

ncl

ud

es t

wo

sep

arat

e

con

cep

tio

ns:

(i)

des

crip

tive

(fo

cus

on

def

init

ion

s an

d r

ole

s o

f te

chn

olo

gy);

and

(ii

)

rela

tion

al

(fo

cus

on

rel

atio

ns

bet

wee

n t

ech

no

logy

an

d s

tru

ctu

re).

Th

ese

two

vie

ws

nee

d t

o b

e in

tegr

ated

to a

cco

un

t fo

r w

hat

tec

hn

olo

gy i

s, h

ow

it d

evel

op

s, a

nd

ho

w i

ts r

elat

ion

s w

ith

org

aniz

atio

ns

are

chan

gin

g.

Th

e p

rob

lem

wit

h t

he

exis

tin

g

org

aniz

atio

n l

iter

atu

re i

s th

e la

ck o

f

atte

nti

on

aff

ord

ed t

o t

he

chan

gin

g

rela

tio

nsh

ip b

etw

een

tec

hn

olo

gy a

nd

org

aniz

atio

ns.

Wh

ile

this

may

ref

lect

th

e

earl

ier

role

of

tech

no

logy

in

mer

ely

“au

tom

atin

g” e

xist

ing

op

erat

ion

s o

r

spee

din

g u

p i

nfo

rmat

ion

flo

w,

con

tem

po

rary

tec

hn

olo

gy i

s re

pla

cin

g

the

cen

tral

ro

le o

f h

iera

rch

y in

con

tro

llin

g an

d c

oo

rdin

atin

g

org

aniz

atio

nal

act

ivit

ies.


449

Def

init

ion

of

Tec

hn

olo

gy

Tec

hn

olo

gy i

s h

ere

def

ined

as

ob

ject

s an

d a

ctio

ns

that

“ad

mit

th

e

po

ssib

ilit

y o

f o

sten

sive

def

init

ion

”.

Tec

hn

olo

gy i

s h

ere

def

ined

as

com

pri

sin

g m

ech

anic

al (

i.e.

,

har

dw

are)

, hu

man

(i.

e., s

kil

ls a

nd

hu

man

en

ergy

), a

nd

kn

ow

led

ge (

i.e.

,

mea

nin

gs a

nd

co

nce

pts

) sy

stem

s.

Tec

hn

olo

gy is

no

t sp

ecif

ical

ly d

efin

ed, b

ut

the

focu

s is

pri

mar

ily

on

IT

, an

d i

n

par

ticu

lar,

its

mat

eria

l fe

atu

res,

wh

ich

may

cre

ate

new

aff

ord

ance

s fo

r

org

aniz

ing.

Lo

gic

of

Arg

um

ent

Tec

hn

olo

gy h

as a

du

al n

atu

re—

as a

ph

ysic

al a

nd

so

cial

ob

ject

. Pro

po

se

an

inte

rpre

tive

ma

teri

ali

sm

th

at

view

s te

chn

olo

gy a

s a

soci

al o

bje

ct.

Th

is p

ersp

ecti

ve r

eco

gniz

es t

hat

tech

no

logi

es a

re c

on

stru

ed a

nd

reco

nst

rued

as

they

are

des

ign

ed,

bu

ilt,

so

ld, a

nd

use

d, b

ut

also

ack

no

wle

dge

s th

at t

his

pro

cess

of

soci

al c

on

stru

ctio

n i

s li

mit

ed b

y

tech

no

logy

’s p

hys

ical

pro

per

ties

and

by

the

larg

er s

oci

o-e

con

om

ic

con

text

.

Tec

hn

olo

gy h

as a

du

al n

atu

re—

as a

pro

du

ct a

nd

a p

roce

ss. P

rop

ose

ado

pti

on

of

bo

th p

osi

tio

nal

an

d

rela

tio

nal

vie

ws

of

tech

no

logy

dra

win

g

on

str

uct

ura

tio

n t

heo

ry. A

pos

itio

na

l

view

, fo

cusi

ng

on

tec

hn

olo

gica

l an

d

stru

ctu

ral

con

stru

cts

(e.g

., co

mp

lexi

ty,

task

def

init

ion

, wo

rkfl

ow

in

tegr

atio

n,

etc.

), s

ho

uld

be

foll

ow

ed b

y a

rela

tion

al

view

th

at e

xam

ines

th

e re

lati

on

s

bet

wee

n t

ech

no

logy

an

d s

tru

ctu

re i

n

org

aniz

atio

ns

(un

der

sto

od

to

be

con

tin

uo

us,

ch

angi

ng,

an

d i

nte

ract

ive)

.

Tec

hn

olo

gy m

ay b

e u

sefu

lly

un

der

sto

od

thro

ugh

th

e le

ns

of

affo

rdan

ces,

wh

ich

allo

ws

exam

inat

ion

of

ho

w t

he

mat

eria

lity

of

an o

bje

ct b

oth

in

vite

s an

d

inh

ibit

s a

set

of

spec

ific

use

s. P

rop

ose

th

e

term

aff

ord

an

ces

for

orga

niz

ing

as

a w

ay

to c

on

cep

tual

ize

the

dyn

amic

pro

cess

by

wh

ich

IT

an

d o

rgan

izat

ion

s in

ters

ect

and

evo

lve

toge

ther

ove

r ti

me.

Res

earc

h A

gen

da

Un

idir

ecti

on

al p

atte

rns

of

chan

ge

are

inap

pro

pri

ate

wh

en o

ne

exam

ines

a t

ech

no

logy

’s

ram

ific

atio

ns

acro

ss a

ran

ge o

f

occ

up

atio

ns

or

org

aniz

atio

ns

(e.g

.,

Un

ifo

rm o

r ge

ner

aliz

ed d

escr

ipti

on

s o

f

tech

no

logy

an

d o

rgan

izat

ion

al

adap

tab

ilit

y o

r u

tili

ty a

re n

o l

on

ger

app

rop

riat

e. I

nst

ead

, nee

d a

con

tin

gen

cy f

ram

ewo

rk, a

nd

mo

re

Nee

d t

o o

pen

up

th

e b

lack

bo

x o

f

tech

no

logy

an

d o

rgan

izat

ion

s b

y

exam

inin

g th

eir

dyn

amic

in

terp

lay.

450


Tabl

e 10

.4

Revi

ews

of th

e Li

tera

ture

on

Tech

nolo

gy a

nd O

rgan

izatio

ns—

Rese

arch

Stre

am II

(Con

tinue

d)

Bar

ley

(19

88

)R

ob

erts

& G

rab

ow

ski

(19

96

)Z

amm

uto

et

al. (

20

07

)

the

sam

e te

chn

olo

gy’s

cap

acit

y ca

n

occ

asio

n c

on

tras

tin

g so

cial

ord

ers

in d

iffe

ren

t co

nte

xts

). N

eed

to

ente

rtai

n c

om

ple

x a

nd

eq

uiv

oca

l

tren

ds

in t

he

rela

tio

ns

bet

wee

n

tech

no

logy

an

d o

rgan

izat

ion

s.

To

un

der

stan

d h

ow

tec

hn

olo

gy

rest

ruct

ure

s w

ork

, res

earc

her

s n

eed

to f

ocu

s o

n a

ctio

ns

and

inte

rpre

tati

on

s, a

s w

ell

as r

elev

ant

tech

nic

al a

ttri

bu

tes,

ch

arac

teri

stic

s

of

occ

up

atio

ns

and

org

aniz

atio

ns,

and

par

amet

ers

of

the

larg

er s

oci

o-

eco

no

mic

en

viro

nm

ent.

refi

ned

typ

olo

gies

of

tech

no

logy

. Als

o

nee

d m

ore

stu

die

s o

f d

ecis

ion

set

tin

gs

that

are

ch

arac

teri

zed

by

incr

easi

ng

kn

ow

led

ge, c

om

ple

xity

an

d t

urb

ule

nce

.

Nee

d t

emp

ora

l an

d l

on

gitu

din

al s

tud

ies

of

org

aniz

atio

ns

and

tec

hn

olo

gy, i

n

par

ticu

lar

to a

cco

un

t fo

r th

e d

ual

nat

ure

of

tech

no

logy

as

pro

cess

an

d

pro

du

ct, a

nd

th

e ch

angi

ng

rela

tio

ns

bet

wee

n t

ech

no

logy

an

d o

rgan

izat

ion

s

in a

flu

id a

nd

ch

angi

ng

wo

rld

.

Pro

po

se f

ive

aff

ord

an

ces

th

at c

har

acte

rize

the

IT-o

rgan

izat

ion

rel

atio

nsh

ip, a

nd

wh

ich

can

cre

ate

the

po

ten

tial

fo

r n

ew

form

s o

f o

rgan

izin

g to

em

erge

: (i)

visu

aliz

ing

enti

re w

ork

pro

cess

es; (

ii)

real

-tim

e/fl

exib

le p

rod

uct

an

d s

ervi

ce

inn

ova

tio

n; (

iii)

vir

tual

co

llab

ora

tio

n;

(iv)

mas

s co

llab

ora

tio

n; a

nd

(v)

sim

ula

tio

n/s

ynth

etic

rea

lity

.


451

construct within organization research. Zammuto et al. (2007) observe that

while technology has been a central variable in organizational theory since the

1950s, the past couple of decades have seen a noticeable and significant

decline in interest and attention among organizational scholars. They argue

that this is problematic given the pervasive presence of technology in contem-

porary organizations, and the potential for such technologies to enable impor-

tant shifts in organizational form and function. They suggest that organization

scholars need to rediscover the central principle of the sociotechnical systems

perspective (Trist, 1981), that is of viewing “the social and technological

systems in organizations in concert” (Zammuto et al., 2007, p. 752).

Problems with Existing Literature

The three reviews highlight somewhat different concerns with the literature,

concerns they suggest lead to the literature’s difficulties in explaining existing

technological phenomena. Barley (1988) for example, argues that scholars have

been misled by assuming that technology is either a physical object or a social

product. He observes that a focus on the physical aspects of technology has led

researchers into an inappropriate materialism that often results in

technological

determinism—

the view that technology’s effects on social life are determining

and inevitable. In turn, a focus on technology as a social production has led to

an overreliance on culture as a primary driver, potentially leading to a form of

social determinism.

Barley further criticizes the existing literature for seeking

“to subsume all events under a single ethos”, which has led to “visions that

shortchange social complexity, distort the nature of technology, and lead

ultimately to a claim that a technology’s effects are foregone conclusions” (1988,

p. 34). He contends that, as a result, current theories of technology and work

are either too brutish or too brittle to capture the multiple and subtle ramifica-

tions of technical change.

Writing almost 10 years later, Roberts and Grabowski (1996) suggest that

the organization literature offers two distinct perspectives on technology: (i) a

descriptive

view (which focuses on types and roles of technology within

organizations), and (ii) a

relational

view (which focuses on the relations

between technology and structure). They argue that these two views, on their

own, are incomplete, and thus need to be integrated so as to account for the

nature and development of technology, and for its relations with organiza-

tions, particularly as these evolve over time with the changes brought on by

the post-industrial age. Focusing less on how the literature has treated tech-

nology, Zammuto et al. (2007) note that since the central focus on technology

in early contingency research, considerations of technology have been

displaced over time as institutional, population ecology, and resource depen-

dence theories have gained prominence in organization science. They argue

that the problem with the existing management literature is its lack of atten-

tion to the changing relationship between technology and organization, and

452


specifically, how “IT is supplanting hierarchy’s role in coordinating and

controlling activities” (p. 750).

Definition of Technology

Definitions of technology and what is most salient differ somewhat across the

three reviews. Barley (1988, p. 46) for example, draws on Winner (1977) to

note three different uses of the term “technology” in social science: technol-

ogy as machines and devices, technology as technique (stylized behaviors and

cognitions), and technology as organization (specific arrangement of tools,

people, and tasks). He argues that equating technology with social elements is

conceptually confusing: “When technology and organization are allowed to

share the same semantic domain, it often becomes difficult to decide where

technology stops and organization begins” (Barley, 1988, p. 46). He thus

advocates restricting the term “technology” to objects and actions that “admit

the possibility of ostensive definition”, proposing the notion of technology as

a “social object”.

Roberts and Grabowski (1996) discuss seven different definitions of tech-

nology that are evident in the literature, noting interesting and conflicting

differences. They conclude by drawing on Collins, Hage and Hull’s (1986)

proposal that posits technology as including three aspects: mechanical sys-

tems (i.e., hardware); human systems (i.e., skills and human energy); and

knowledge systems (i.e., abstract meanings and concepts). Zammuto et al.

(2007, p. 751) do not offer an explicit definition of technology, grounding

their view instead in specific features of contemporary information technol-

ogy: “increasing capacity in terms of computing power, communication, and

integration capabilities”, as well as the development of enterprise-wide

information systems that have “created opportunities to organize around pro-

cesses, not only separate steps or functions”.

Logic of Argument

All three of the reviews highlight a process approach to studying technology,

and incorporate such an approach in their proposals. Arguing for what he calls

an

interpretive materialism,

Barley (1988) proposes that scholars investigate

how a technology is construed and reconstrued as it is designed, built, sold,

and used, while also examining how these processes of social construction are

constrained by a technology’s physical properties as well as by the larger socio-

economic contexts in which the technology is situated. Roberts and Grabowski

(1996) draw on structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) to propose an integration

of technology’s status as both a product and a process. They suggest that schol-

ars first adopt a

positional

lens that focuses on technological and structural

constructs such as complexity, task definition, and workflow integration, and

then follow this with a

relational lens that examines the fluid and interactive

relations between technology and structure in organizations.

Sociomateriality • 453

Zammuto et al. (2007, p. 752) draw on ecological psychology (Gibson,

1979) to advocate the analytic lens of “affordances” (Gibson, 1977; Hutchby,

2001) in studying technology and organizations: “An affordance perspective

recognizes how the materiality of an object favors, shapes, or invites, and at

the same time constrains, a set of specific uses”. They introduce the term

affordances for organizing as a way to conceptualize the process by which IT

and organizations are “woven together”, arguing that “although IT and orga-

nization features may exist independently of each other, their value for

explaining organizational form and function comes from how they are

enacted together” (Zummato et al., 2007, p. 753).

Research Agenda

In making recommendations for future organization research, each of the

three reviews makes a number of specific suggestions. Barley (1988) cautions

scholars to avoid unidirectional models of technical change, arguing that any

examination of a technology’s ramifications across a range of occupations or

organizations will reveal that single or invariant relationships do not apply. He

recommends attending to how a technology interacts with specific meanings,

actions, cultures, structures, and institutional environments, examining how

the same technical capacity may be used in multiple contexts to occasion quite

different social structures. He encourages researchers to engage with (rather

than reduce) the complexity and equivocality that they observe empirically in

relations between technology and organizations.

Echoing Barley (1988), Roberts and Grabowski (1996) similarly caution

that uniform or generalized descriptions of technology and organizational

utility are no longer appropriate. Instead, they argue for a contingency frame-

work, augmented with more refined typologies of technology. They further

recommend additional investigations of decision settings that are character-

ized by increasing knowledge, complexity, and turbulence. Reflecting their

process orientation, they urge more temporal and longitudinal studies of

organizations and technology, arguing that these are needed to account for the

dual nature of technology as process and product, and to accommodate the

necessarily changing relations that exist between technology and organiza-

tions in a fluid and dynamic world.

Zammuto et al. (2007), in turn, advocate using the notion of affordances

to examine the dynamic and often unpredictable interplay of IT and organi-

zations. They articulate five possible affordances (not an exhaustive list)

jointly created by technical and organizational features that appear to be

particularly salient in contemporary workplaces: visualizing entire work

processes, real-time/flexible product and service innovation, virtual collabo-

ration, mass collaboration, and simulation/synthetic reality. They urge

organizational scholars to address seriously the influence of IT in organizing:

“[I]t does not make sense to study the dynamics of human behavior within

454 • The Academy of Management Annals

organizations without taking into account how information technologies

might affect it” (p. 760).

Moving Forward: Beyond Separation and Towards Fusion

Whether emphasizing individual, stable entities or ongoing, interactive

processes, the two research streams have generated valuable insights into

specific aspects of the relationships between technology and organizations.

As with all perspectives, however, they also entail conceptual commitments

that generate some distinctive blindspots in dealing with technology in orga-

nizational life. After discussing two of these difficulties, we will propose that a

possible way forward is to challenge the deeply taken-for-granted assumption

that technology, work, and organizations should be conceptualized

separately, and to theorize their fusion. To this end, we discuss a promising

emerging stream of research that we refer to under the umbrella term sociom-

ateriality, which posits the inherent inseparability between the technical and

the social.

Research Streams I and II: Some Difficulties

The first difficulty evident in both Research Stream I and II concerns the focus

on technology as causing or occasioning some organizational effect or change

(e.g., development, diffusion, adoption, adaptation, improvement, etc.). This

suggests that technology is relevant to organizational theorizing only as

specific technological events or processes occur. As such, technology is seen to

be of particular interest at certain times, in explicit places, and during special

organizational circumstances.

While we learn much by considering technology as a specific organiza-

tional event or process, such a view also obscures ways of seeing how all

organizational practices and relations always entail some sort of technological

(or material) mediation. As we discuss below, to the extent that technology is

treated as an occasional or separate organizational phenomenon, we lose the

possibility of seeing how it is an integral part of all organizing at all times,

places, and circumstances.

The second difficulty is associated with positing the technology–human (or

organizational) relationship as involving distinct entities or processes that

interrelate in some way. What becomes relevant to study in this logic is the

nature of the relationship entailed, whether this is understood as a unidirec-

tional causal influence (e.g., in the technological imperative or strategic design

perspectives or Research Stream I) or as a mutual interaction (as in the process

perspective of Research Stream II) (Markus & Robey, 1988).

By studying how technology and humans (or organizations) influence each

other, the studies constituting Research Streams I and II have shed important

light on the impacts, interactions, and unanticipated consequences of technol-

ogy design and use in organizations. But what remains unquestioned in this


logic is the assumption that technology and humans (or organizations) are

separate in the first place. As we discuss below, research conducted in what

may be seen as an emerging third research stream has begun to challenge this

ontological separation, arguing in contrast for a relational ontology that dis-

solves analytical boundaries between technologies and humans (Knorr-Cetina,

1997; Latour, 2005; Pickering, 1995).

Research Stream III: Sociomaterial Assemblages

This promising stream of research, which we organize under the banner of

“sociomateriality”, makes a distinctive move away from seeing actors and

objects as primarily self-contained entities that influence each other (Slife,

2005), either through impacts (Research Stream I) or interactions (Research

Stream II). Instead, the focus is on agencies that have so thoroughly saturated

each other that previously taken-for-granted boundaries are dissolved. Our

analytical gaze is drawn away from discrete entities of people and technology,

or ensembles “of equipment, techniques, applications, and people”

(Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001) to composite and shifting assemblages. Another

way to put this is that this is a move away from focusing on how technologies

influence humans, to examining how materiality is intrinsic to everyday

activities and relations. As a thought experiment, consider doing anything in

the world (whether at home, on the road, or in organizations) that does not in

some way or another entail material means (e.g., bodies, clothes, food, specta-

cles, buildings, classrooms, devices, water pipes, paper, telephones, email,

etc.). Furthermore, these material means are not so much tools to be used to

accomplish some tasks, but they are constitutive of both activities and identi-

ties. Latour’s (2004, p. 227) provocative quote makes this point particularly

well:

To distinguish a piori “material” and “social” ties before linking them

together again makes about as much sense as to account for the

dynamic of a battle by imagining, first, a group of soldiers and officers

stark naked; second, a heap of paraphernalia—tanks, paperwork,

uniforms—and then claim that “of course there exists some (dialecti-

cal) relation between the two”. No! one should retort, there exists no

relation whatsoever between the material and the social world, because

it is the division that is first of all a complete artefact. To abandon the

division is not to “relate” the heap of naked soldiers with the heap of

material stuff, it is to rethink the whole assemblage from top to bottom

and from beginning to end.

From this perspective, people and things only exist in relation to each other,

and as Slife (2005, p. 159) puts it: “They start out and forever remain in rela-

tionship”. In other words, entities (whether humans or technologies) have no

inherent properties, but acquire form, attributes, and capabilities through their


interpenetration. This is a relational ontology that presumes the social and the

material are inherently inseparable. As Barad (2003. p. 816) argues, this is a

constitutive entanglement that does not presume independent or even interde-

pendent entities with distinct and inherent characteristics.4 The portmanteau

“sociomaterial” (no hyphen) attempts to signal this ontological fusion. Any

distinction of humans and technologies is analytical only, and done with the

recognition that these entities necessarily entail each other in practice.

This third research stream is relatively new, as reflected in the breadth and

fluidity of its intellectual ideas and substantive themes. While the key contours

and core contents of a sociomaterial approach are still emerging, they point to

a body of work that transcends both the focus on discrete entities of the first

research stream and the focus on mutually dependent ensembles of the sec-

ond. Table 10.5 depicts the primary characteristics of sociomaterial research

(as currently evident) in relation to the other two research streams.

While this stream of research is still too unsettled to admit the sort of anal-

ysis we conducted for the other two streams, we can highlight a few emerging

research themes, as well as outline a possible research agenda for scholarship

going forward.

Research Themes

This emerging stream of work includes a number of interesting studies and

generative concepts that appear to offer some promising directions for future

work (see Table 10.6).

The most prominent body of literature that we are organizing under the

umbrella term of sociomateriality belongs to Actor Network Theory (ANT),

originally developed by sociologists Michel Callon (1986) and Bruno Latour

(1987). In this view, as Law (2000, p. 1) explains: “an object is an effect of an

array of relations”, in which humans and technologies are not only reciprocally

interdependent, but also symmetrically relevant. From an ANT perspective,

there are no distinct and separate social or technological elements that interact

with each other; rather, technological artifacts are considered as equivalent

participants in a network of human and non-human agencies that (tempo-

rarily) align to achieve particular effects.

In ANT studies, relations are no longer seen as a concept with which to

frame some aspect of the research, but instead become the theoretical foci and

central explanatory vehicle of the research. The analytical goal in such studies

is to present “society, organizations, agents, and machines [as] effects gener-

ated in patterned networks of diverse (not simply human) materials” (Law,

1992, p. 380). In one of the influential papers often cited in support of this

approach, Callon (1986) famously blurs the human and material agencies at

work on a beach: “Scallops make the fisherman do things just as nets placed in

the ocean lure the scallops into attaching themselves to the nets and just as the

data collectors bring together the fisherman and the scallops in oceanography”.


Tabl

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ree

Stre

ams

of R

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on T

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y and

Org

aniza

tions

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Pri

mar

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Tabl

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In the area of technology and organizations, the use of ANT has been used

to shed light on technological relations in the workplace (Berg, 1997; Monteiro

& Hanseth, 1996; Walsham & Sahay, 1999). For example, Scott and Wagner

(2003) use ANT to discuss a case in which the ambitions of a university vice

president to elevate his organization to the status of “gold standard” combined

with the concerns of the financial controller regarding their top rated (AAA)

audit compliance to drive the adoption of a particular technical accounting

method during the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP)

package. This accounting method was written into the programming code

during the customization of the ERP software and subsequently manifested in

the graphical representation and calculative processes of reports that the

university administrators were told they must use. In this way, the social life

worlds of university rankings, claims regarding expert accounting knowledge,

government regulations, and the practices of credit rating agencies were entan-

gled with the technological agencies of the ERP package and routine conver-

sations among administrators and academics about how much money they

had left in their grants. These entanglements triggered intense controversies

over values, identities, and community within the university.

Similarly drawing on a relational ontology, Latham and Sassen (2005)

point to the emergence of whole new sociotechnical relations and domains—

digital formations—which they argue need to be constructed as objects of

study. These “sociodigitized” structures “exhibit dynamics of their own that

derive from technological capacities that enable specific patterns of interac-

tion (Latham & Sassen, 2005, pp. 3–5). In another example, Kallinikos (2006)

explores the issue of information growth, challenging the assumption that

there is a straightforward connection between an objectified domain of

technology and a normative world of institutions. He rejects the standard

maxim that data, information, and knowledge are separate organizational

resources representing a hierarchy of phenomena that can be strategically

leveraged through the application of technology. He argues instead that “tech-

nological information” is a pervasive element of institutional life (its habitat),

and thus crucially involved in the reconstitution of organizational reality in

various novel forms.

In work in the sociology of science, Pickering (1993, 1995) argues for the

value of a relational ontology that is premised on the “insistence that material

and human agencies are mutually and emergently productive of one another”

(Pickering, 1993, p. 567). Based on his empirical studies of scientific practice,

he develops the concept of a mangle of practice to highlight that human and

material agencies are not pre-given but emerge temporally in practice through

a dialectic process of resistance and accommodation. Jones (1998) subse-

quently extends Pickering’s ideas to the case of information technology within

organizations, arguing that the production and use of this technology entails a

“double mangling” of human and material agencies:


… as human agents seek to marshal material agency to direct the

actions of other human agents. The outcome of technology develop-

ment and use cannot be reliably predicted, as both the technical and

social are mangled together in the process to produce specific, situated

instantiations. Rather than seeing humans with clearly-defined goals

applying technologies with clearly-defined properties to achieve clearly-

defined organizational effects, therefore, we need to understand the

process of information systems development and use as an ongoing

double dance of agency. (Jones, 1998, p. 299)

In related phenomenologically-grounded research, Suchman (2007) argues

for the sociomaterial dynamics of everyday practices, drawing on a number of

cases including photocopiers, robots, and cyborg information systems. In one

example, she describes an engineer working at a computer-aided design

(CAD) workstation, where the technology, rather than being understood as

representing the specific details of a site—features of the locale, roadways,

environments, people, etc.—is seen to constitute and connect the engineering

work to those objects:

The engineer knows the project through a multiplicity of documents,

discussions, extended excursions to the project site, embodied labors,

and accountabilities: the textual, graphical, and symbolic inscriptions of

the interface are read in relation to these heterogeneous forms of

embodied knowing. Immersed in her work, the CAD interface becomes

for the engineer a simulacrum of the site, not in the sense of a substitute

for it but rather of a place in which to work, with its own specific mate-

rialities, constraints and possibilities. (Suchman, 2007, p. 279)

In this view, everyday practice is configured and reconfigured by the multiple

meanings and materialities that are fused together in the engineer’s work. This

fusion is evident in Figure 10.1, which shows at a glance how office work is

inextricably tied up with the sociomaterial. We see the physical hub of a

person’s work practices composed of an array of materiality imbued with

multiple logics and capabilities (programs, reminders, sources, and connec-

tions) all poised to form part of the pattern of her work flow, ready to be

actively configured into a situated work performance.Figure 10.1 Example of Sociomateriality in Office Work

A central idea entailed in sociomateriality is the notion of performativity

(Barad, 2003). While related to the notion of performance, performativity is

not synonymous with it. Where “performance” refers to the doing of some

activity (as when a physician “performs” a medical examination, or a musician

“performs” in front of an audience), performativity refers to enactment. It has

its roots in J.L. Austin’s (1962) notion of “performative utterances” (i.e., lan-

guage that executes action, as in uttering “I do” at a wedding, or “I name this

ship …” at a launching ceremony). More generally, a discourse may be said to


be performative if it contributes to the constitution of the reality that it

describes (Callon, 1998).

The notion of performativity has been taken up by a number of social sci-

entists. For example, Judith Butler (1990) has used the notion to study how

gendered identities are not “naturally-given” but actively and materially con-

structed (“performed”) through discourse. Other examples are evident in the

sociology of technology and science, where scholars have used the notion of

performativity to understand how financial models and economic theories

produce the market conditions and effects that they attempt to represent and

explain (Beunza & Stark, 2004; Callon, 1998; Callon & Muniesa, 2005;

MacKenzie, 2006; MacKenzie & Millo, 2003). In this view, “economics creates

the phenomenon it describes, rather than describing an already existing ‘econ-

omy’” (MacKenzie, 2005, p. 64). In an example of this work, MacKenzie

(2006) analyzes the Black-Scholes pricing model in options markets, showing

how the Black-Scholes formula first described the world of options pricing,

but how over time it came to enact that world through its inscriptions in com-

puter algorithms, professional skills, and financial institutions. As MacKenzie

and Millo (2003) note: “Option pricing theory … succeeded empirically not

because it discovered preexisting price patterns but because markets changed

in ways that made its assumptions more accurate and because the theory was

used in arbitrage” (p. 107).

Figure 10.1 Example of Sociomateriality in Office Work.


The performativity of models is a particularly relevant theme for scholars

of technology, entailing what Callon and Muniesa (2005) refer to as “algorith-

mic configurations”, forms of work and ordering that are produced by the dis-

tributed and mutually constituting calculative agencies of humans and

technologies. For example, in their study of arbitrage trading, Beunza and Stark

(2004, pp. 396–397) show how the technologies of quantitative finance “visu-

alize, cut, probe, and dissect ephemeral properties in the project of interpreting

markets”, and how in so doing “the products of their interventions become a

part of the phenomenon they are monitoring”.

For scholars of sociomateriality, the notion of performativity draws atten-

tion to how relations and boundaries between humans and technologies are

not pre-given or fixed, but enacted in practice. A practice lens is thus partic-

ularly helpful in grounding this notion of performativity. Practice studies—

or more accurately what has been referred to as “the practice turn”

(Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina, & Savigny, 2001)—has received growing attention

in recent management and organization studies research (e.g., Organization

Studies 2006, volume 17, number 5). The term “practice” in this context

does not refer to rendering pragmatic insights from management research

for a practitioner audience, nor is it meant to imply separation of academic

theory from practice. Rather, it is the scholarly effort of understanding how

boundaries and relations are enacted in recurrent activities. As Reckwitz

(2002, p. 252) notes, the routinized way in which “bodies are shaped, objects

are handled, subjects are treated, things are described, and the world is

understood”. In this view, an organization is held to be a recurrently enacted

and patterned set of relations, reproduced over time and space. Attempts to

identify an encompassing, systematic “practice theory” (Friedmann, 1987,

p.186) have largely given way to the suggestion that the concept of practice

is most effectively used as a way of framing and orienting research (Schatzki,

2001, p 4.).

The practice lens marks out a distinctive way of thinking about organizations

and activities of organizing (Gherardi, 2006; Orlikowski, 2000; Whittington,

2006). Organization studies that have adopted this approach analyze the flow

of situated action as expressed through, for example, organizational routines

(Feldman & Pentland, 2003), global product development (Orlikowski, 2002),

interactive strategizing (Jarzabkowski, 2005), and communities of practice

(Wenger, 1998). Ironically, as Duguid (2005) notes: once the unit of analysis

has been framed, the idea of practice is theoretically bracketed by many scholars.

As he put it when critiquing community of practice studies: there is often more

emphasis on the community than the practice. Our observation is that, since

technology and contemporary work practices saturate each other, further

efforts to theorize practice must encompass technology in organizations. We

believe a way to achieve this is with the notion of sociomateriality, and turn

next to some thoughts on a possible research agenda.


Research Agenda

Since any approach influences the way phenomena are framed from the outset

of a study, it might help if we compare a sociomaterial framing to that of the

previous research streams of work and technology discussed above. As we

saw, both Research Streams I and II have tended (in different ways) to objec-

tify the technical and to sequestrate the social, creating two distinct domains

within the research. This presumption of separation is then inscribed in the

priorities of the study and, most importantly, in its analytical gaze, producing

strategies of data gathering and analysis that are necessarily split between two

categories: the technologies (artifacts, techniques, systems, media) and the

social (meaning, activities, contexts, outcomes). The language and assump-

tions of separation thus lead conceptually and methodologically to a realm of

possible findings that are already configured. By design then, the frames,

methods, and findings of Research Streams I and II entail accounts of impacts

or interactions of the social and the technical. As a result, we lose the possibil-

ity of seeing the technical and social as inextricably fused. Part of the problem,

as we have noted, is linguistic. Suchman (2007, p. 263) writes that “our

language for talking about […] persons or artefacts presupposes a field of

discrete, self-standing entities”.

The notion of sociomateriality distinguishing Research Stream III attempts

to move beyond the separation of the technical and the social. For researchers

in this stream, practices are always sociomaterial, and this sociomateriality is

integral, inherent, and constitutive, shaping the contours and possibilities of

everyday organizing. As Barad (2003, p. 818) puts it, “Agencies are not

attributes [of either humans or nonhumans] but ongoing reconfigurations of

the world”. Thus, an important challenge for research going forward is devel-

oping ways of thinking and talking about the social and material worlds as

inseparable, as constitutively entangled.

Without wishing to prematurely preclude any approach to studying socio-

materiality, we offer some thoughts about how such research might be

framed in order to provide suggestions for those interested in pursuing this

agenda further. We illustrate the research agenda discussed here with con-

temporary phenomena many of which are associated with computer-based

information systems, because this reflects our belief that sociomateriality

resonates particularly well with current organizational challenges. However,

there is no reason, in principle, why this genre of scholarship would not be

appropriate for historical manifestations of work and organizations, if they

lend themselves to analysis from a sociomaterial perspective.

Whereas scholars in Research Stream II often center their analyses on

events and processes, sociomateriality studies would seek to find ways to bring

to the foreground patterns within the constitution of everyday work practices.

For example, a sociomateriality lens may be particularly valuable in helping to


research the expansion of management knowledge (Sahlin-Andersson &

Engwall, 2002) in everyday organizational life. The expansion of management

knowledge in organizations marks the escalation of specific sociomaterial

techniques into packages of ideas and management recipes that spread with all

the dynamics of a fashion or fad until they attain the status of commonly

espoused or “canonical” practices (Brown & Duguid, 2000, p. 99). Some of

these techniques become known by acronyms such as ERP (Enterprise

Resource Planning) or NPM (New Public Management), while others are

more recognizable as programs of action that gain sufficient momentum to be

assumed to be “best practice” (Wagner, Scott, & Galliers, 2006). Whether the

banner is “globalization” (for example, the competitive shift to global elec-

tronic trading), or “modernization” (for example, the focus on transparency,

accountability, and accessibility in the public domain), sociomateriality is

inseparable from these formulations of management knowledge, their imple-

mentation, and their capacity to ‘travel’ as global ideas.

This points to the next theme in our research agenda, an analysis of the

demands brought about by the need to accommodate sociomaterial reformu-

lations. While previous studies have concentrated on processes of translation

between global ideas and context, the analytical language is still one of sepa-

rateness. What is needed is a recognition of these programs of action as socio-

material enactments, and as requiring concepts capable of acknowledging the

fusion of conceptual and material that constitute these programs (Bowker &

Star, 1999; Orlikowski, 2007). Of particular importance are the negotiations that

“make it work” and an acknowledgement that these can produce contradictory

consequences. On the one hand, they can force convergence around standards,

while on the other improvisations introduce contextual serendipity that surfaces

in other times and places as randomness. Both eventualities store up potential

significance for the future and represent challenges for management especially

since their consequences reveal themselves only through performance.

Some salient research questions would include how particular, inherently

sociomaterial, organizational forms pattern practice, for example: very-large-

conversations using Web-based discussion forums; collaborative dynamics

within e-Science Grids; habitats of connectivity formed through extensive use

of Blackberries and wearable mobile technologies. The challenge in these

examples is to find ways of establishing a corpus of data under fieldwork con-

ditions that are distributed, constantly reconfiguring, fragmented into

enclaves, or restricted by partial access (Law & Urry, 2004). Possibly promis-

ing approaches for addressing these include work on narrative (Czarniawska,

1998; Pentland & Feldman, 2007) and practice-order bundles (Schatzki, 2002).

Many of the methodological issues raised by a sociomateriality research

agenda stem from the way in which research participants disappear from view,

disrupting our routine methods of meaning-making. This is compounded by

our habitual tendency to decompose fluid relationships into separate entities


(Mol & Law, 1994). If we can find a way to reveal the taken-for-granted, invis-

ible dynamics of sociomateriality, it will enable us to generate deep insights

into the contemporary world. We suggest that it is precisely the hidden-from-

view characteristics of sociomateriality that imbue it with such far-reaching

consequences. For example, when Internet search engine software “runs” or is

executed, a set of choices-as-embedded-in-code shape the operation of the

search engine, the databases and indexes that are built and maintained, and the

results that are returned to users (Brin & Page, 1998). A Web search conducted

with the Google search engine is sociomaterial “all the way down”, entailing

computer code written and updated by software engineers, executing on com-

puters (configured with particular hardware and software elements which

were designed and built by computer engineers and production workers), and

whose operation depends on the millions of people who use computers to cre-

ate and update Web pages every day, and the millions of people around the

world who enter particular search criteria into their Web browsers running on

still other computers designed and built by yet other people, and so on.

This is not a neutral process and an important position is accorded to polit-

ical analyses within a research agenda for sociomateriality studies because

(re)distribution of resources is one of its systemic consequences. To continue

with the example used above, the performance of Web search sociomateriality

is both inclusive and exclusive—including well-linked and highly-connected

Web sites, and excluding poorly-linked and less-connected Web sites. This

has considerable political and epistemic implications because it means that a

part of the World Wide Web is completely unavailable to most people. For

example, a study conducted by researchers from IBM (Butler, 2000) found

that the Web includes considerable constellations of Web sites that are diffi-

cult to navigate and thus inaccessible by links. As Introna and Nissenbaum

(2000) note: in this way search engines “are political … constitut[ing] a pow-

erful source of access and accessibility within the Web” (p. 170).

The ideas proposed here are by no means exhaustive, but we believe that

they may open multiple lines for research. Suchman (2007) offers two specific

implications for conducting sociomaterial research. First, she argues that

scholars need to attend to the boundary work through which entities are

defined (2007): “Beginning with the premise that discrete units of analysis are

not given but made, we need to ask how any object of analysis—human or

nonhuman or combination of the two—is called out as separate from the

more extended networks of which it is a part” (p. 283). Second, she suggests

that scholars locate entities in extended spatial and temporal relations: “How

far our analysis extends in its historical specificity and reach, or in following

outlines of connection from a particular object or site to others, is invariably a

practical matter. That is, it is a matter […] of drawing a line that is in every

case enacted rather than given” (p. 284). Taking these implications on board is

a critical matter, as Law and Urry (2004) note: “it is time for social science,


which grew up in the nineteenth century, to review much of its methodologi-

cal inheritance. That inheritance in considerable measure reflects nineteenth-

century preoccupations: with fixing, with demarcating, with separating”

(p. 403). We believe moving beyond preoccupations of separation will help

scholars take seriously notions of distributed agencies, sociomaterial practices,

and performative relations as these play out in organizational realities.

Conclusion: Whither Technology in Management Research?

We began this paper by highlighting a paradox in the management literature.

Despite the substantial empirical evidence of technology’s central role in orga-

nizational affairs, technologies remain largely understudied in organizational

research. Whatever the reasons, we believe that such an absence of attention

to technological issues in organizational research is a serious concern.

It is important that we appreciate that it is not a question of whether tech-

nology forms part of organizing or not; technology is an integral part of the fact

of work and its performance in the world. If we do not take this into consider-

ation in the way that we study organizations, we may not arrive at an under-

standing of how work is “made to work”. Indeed, we believe that to the extent

that the management literature continues to overlook the ways in which orga-

nizing is critically bound up with material forms and spaces, our understanding

of organizational life will remain limited at best, and misleading at worst.

We have proposed sociomateriality as part of a palette of approaches that

we believe may advance the way we study technology, work, and organiza-

tions. As these are multiple, distributed, emergent, dynamic, and unprece-

dented phenomena, we believe a range of different and flexible lenses and

tools is appropriate for studying them. There will be studies for which existing

theory and approaches will be suitable, but there will be many more that

necessitate a fresh perspective. Our call for research to move beyond separat-

ing technology from people, work, and organizations makes the research chal-

lenge ahead of us both substantial and generative. This is a fast-moving field;

just as what we study changes over time, so the theoretical lens or method that

we use to approach it needs to develop over time. As Weick (1996) reminds

us, we should “hold our concepts lightly and update them frequently”.

While the significance of management instruments and canonical practices

has been recognized in organization studies, attention has tended to focus on

technological effects, occasions of change, or processes of sensemaking and

interaction with little recognition of the deeply constitutive entanglement of

humans and organizations with materiality. Yet, evidence from contemporary

organizations suggests that work practices are constituted by an array of

sociomaterial agencies, for example, space, devices, standards, categories,

algorithms, expert judgements, physical mechanisms, and so on.

We make our proposal for the way forward in the spirit that ideas help us

to explicate the world around us. It has become commonplace for studies of


technology in organizations to combine metaphors of networks and infra-

structures with the language of mediation and enabling. However, if we let go

of the methodological assumption that we should think of relationships as

moulded into networks and frame our analysis in terms of practices instead,

we can more effectively examine the specific forms of sociomateriality that are

entailed in performing everyday work. We suggest that this is a particularly

relevant perspective in an era when sociomateriality is so much part of our

everyday organizational experience that it becomes taken-for-granted. Work

practices are inherently sociomaterial, and so to understand work, we must

understand its sociomaterial (re)configurations. The implications for organi-

zations are particularly important; these practices don’t just mediate work,

they perform organizational realities.

Different forms of sociomateriality in practice not only increase the capac-

ity for transactions to be disembedded from time and space, but also disappear

from the attentions of users and observers. Such increased invisibility in the

technological entailments of everyday work practice is troubling, as it limits

our capacity to understand, monitor, reflect on, and change them. It suggests

that additional and alternative ways of examining these entailments are

required in organization studies, particularly given the relative absence of

attention paid to materiality in recent organization scholarship. We believe

that a sociomaterial perspective may offer one promising approach for recon-

sidering the status of technology in organizational research, and that a

grounding in relationality, performativity, and sociomaterial assemblages

(rather than either discrete entities or mutually dependent ensembles) may

afford some empirical and conceptual innovations that will increase our

understandings of the practices of contemporary organizational life.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Art Brief and Jim Walsh for their invitation to develop

this chapter, and for providing valuable editorial guidance and support. We

also want to express our gratitude to colleagues at both MIT and The London

School of Economics and Political Science for comments made in seminars

discussing earlier versions of these ideas. Particular thanks go to Aleksi

Aaltonen, Matthew Jones, Lucas Introna, and Edgar Whitley for providing

detailed feedback on a draft of this chapter, and to Aaron Martin and Niki

Panourgias for their very helpful research assistance.

Endnotes

1. A similar conclusion was reached by Zammuto et al. (2007), who surveyed these

four journals specifically for studies of the relationship between technology and

organizational from and function. They found that only 2.8% of articles between

1996 and 2005 addressed this phenomenon.


2. While both TIM and OCIS members may of course focus on non-technological

phenomena in their research, the relative interest among organization scholars to

affiliate with these AoM divisions offers something of a benchmark in terms of

the level of attention to technology we might expect in the mainstream manage-

ment literature.

3. While our interest is in technology, broadly defined, it is the case that much of the

organizational literature on technology (and particularly the more recent litera-

ture) focuses largely on computer-based or information technologies. This

tendency is consequently reflected in our discussion of the literature.

4. Part of the difficulty in discussing this perspective is that our language makes it

difficult to express indissolubility. We are used to dividing, separating, and distin-

guishing. Thus, even terms such as “mutual constitution”, “entanglement”,

“assemblage”, and “relationality” allude to separateness, even as they try to move

beyond it.

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